Potted film reviews by Gary Anthony Cross

July 8, 2016July 8, 2016

Ley Lines (1999)

Ley Lines concerns a trio of small town half-Chinese boys who decide to run away from their rural backwater and head for the bright lights of Tokyo, only to find squalor and degradation within its seedy underbelly. Befriending a local prostitute they hatch a scheme to rob a gangster to get the money to pay for passage away from Japan.

This is one of Takashi Miike’s more conventional movies, but it still contains many of his trademark themes; he certainly pulls no punches when it comes to depicting sex, violence and of course, sexual violence, and as such it can make extremely grim viewing. The title “Ley Lines” is a rather ironic one as they are mystical lines of convergence, whereas I think Miike what was trying to say was that all of the people inhabiting this twilight world could not help but continually run into each other, either as perpetrator of crime or victim because they were all ultimately trapped within this ugly twilight world.

If you have the stomach for its more extreme moments Ley Lines is a rewarding film, but it certainly won’t be to more mainstream tastes.